This week in...1992
The Song
Baby Got Back
The Artist
Sir Mix-a-Lot
The Lyrics
I like big butts and I can not lie / You other brothers can't deny / That when a girl walks in with an itty bitty waist / And a round thing in your face / You get sprung
The Results
Off the US rapper's third studio album Mack Daddy, it was No. 1 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart for five weeks in the summer of 1992, and won a Grammy a year later for Best Rap Solo Performance.
It was also the second best-selling song in the US in 1992, behind Whitney Houston's I Will Always Love You.
That was then...
At the time of its release, Baby Got Back caused controversy with its outspoken and blatantly sexual lyrics about women and their posteriors, which some found objectionable. The music video was also briefly banned by MTV.
This is now...
Although it's 24 years old, it looks like the raunchy number is still making news.
At the Cannes Film Festival last month, US actress Blake Lively posted a side-by-side image of one of her red carpet looks on Instagram - one of her front and the other of her back in a curve-hugging gown.
She captioned it with a reference to Baby Got Back: "L.A. face with an Oakland booty".
It immediately riled up netizens, who cried racial insensitivity.
But Sir Mix-a-Lot, 52, who hasn't released an album since 2003's Daddy's Home, came out of the woodwork to defend Lively and defuse the online vitriol.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he said: "The reason I wrote the song was because I always felt that the African American idea of what was beautiful was shunned… What was promoted as beautiful was kind of really waif-thin."
He added: "Fast-forward to Blake Lively. For her to look at her butt and that little waist and to say 'L.A. face with an Oakland booty', doesn't that mean that the norm has changed, that the beautiful people have accepted our idea of beautiful? That's the way I took it."
Get The New Paper on your phone with the free TNP app. Download from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store now
